Crustaceans by Andrew Cowan Read Free Book Online

at the end of this first row, directly facing the off-licence. A chalked board on the pavement says, 20% Off Whisky, and as I walk slowly towards it, fresh snow swirling about me, I toss my lighter aside and turn up my collar. I take out my cough sweets and stand in the doorway and gaze across to my building. It is derelict now. The stuccoed exterior is blistering, daubed ELEC CUT in red paint by the porch. The upper windows are broken, the lower ones boarded, and the door, which I never knew to be locked, is bolted and chained. A tower of scaffolding supports the end wall, a scraggy bush hangs over the guttering, and the joists of my attic are visible now through the gaps in the roof-tiles. The snow, as it thickens, will settle on the floor of my room.
    Yet long before I moved out the white of my ceiling was tidemarked with damp. Sudden showers would drip through the plaster. Where once there’d been cracks on the landing, in the end there were rents. I began to find the fissures in my own walls; the tilt in my window-frame, always apparent, came to seem ominous. But when I reported all this to the agency I received no reply. My landlady, I knew – from the builder who worked on our drains – was elderly, a spinster, and senile. I suppose she is dead now. Her property looks as though it has never been lived in.
    And I feel nothing, though I would like to, and sense that I ought to. I remember the noises: the pace and weight of Ruth’s tread on the stairs, the high screech in her voice when she shouted. I woke to the sound of her coughing in the bathroom, hacking her phlegm in the sink. In summer we caught the muffled boom of the funfair. Her bangles clacked when we made love, the bed rocked and squeaked, and our voices were thick in the darkness. But now there is silence, or not even that. A bus goes by at the top of the hill, somewhere a door slams. I hear a chinking of bottles, muffled footsteps approaching, a cough. But my presence here gives no significance to these things. I left nine years ago, and took with me no more than I’d brought – the rucksack on my back, a plastic bag in each hand. Everything I’d made at the college was discarded; my flat was more bare than I’d found it. Ruth had been gone for three days – our time in this place was over – and I was happy enough then to think I would never return here.

NINE
    My father was grinding a sculpture. He stood braced at the knee, the tool tucked close to his groin, and rocked back and forth from the hip. A black rubber cord trailed behind him, flexed as he moved. Sparks shot to the floor in a furious cascade, scattering over the concrete, and the noise was deafening, skirling back from the ceiling. A cigarette burned in the side of his mouth; sweat shone from his forehead. He was wearing goggles and earphones, the straps tufting his hair, and he wasn’t aware of me, or seemed not to be. I sat in his chair – an army-surplus fold-out – and slowly swung my legs to and fro. A strip of taut canvas supported my head; my hands were limp on the arm-rests. Sit up, he might say when he saw me, or else point with his thumb to the doors. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, in the place where he worked.
    The sculpture was rusted and covered in chalk marks. Two giant girders rose from a tangle of car parts; a length of undulating steel descended like drapery. In time there would be others just like it, untitled, separately numbered. They stand now in hospital courtyards, shopping precincts, museums. But I was always more interested in the things that surrounded him – in the ladders and gantries and gas cylinders, his chemicals and tools. On a paint tin beside me sat a crocodile clip as big as my hand, and a mug of old coffee, furry with mould. I leaned over and touched the fur with my finger. The grinding wheel spun freely and stopped. The wind was blustering outside. You’re here, then? he said, removing